How did blizzard manage to let class/talent design get so bad?

[Big Thanks]

Another self-proclaimed developer.

I mean...it is no secret todays talents are less "rpg" than any other iteration of any other rpg on the market.

Also no secret Blizzard constantly nerfs "player freedom" in customization...constantly...and as soon as someone steps out of the "box" Blizzard intended us to live in...NERF! Instant!

BfA was no different.
I saw snake eyes from rogue being nerfed to the ground.
I saw revolving blades being nerfed to the ground
I saw the fel rush azerite trait being REMOVED from the game.
Pistol shot trait being nerfed by 60%.

Player imagination, as soon as it gets wild...blizzard nerfs. Wow is a rpg no more in that sense.

[Thetruth1400]

Care to share that quote where Blizzard said all class design was in a bad place?

I believe it was one of the WoW Q&A's right after 8.1 or 8.1.5 came out, but I'm not 100% sure. I will rewatch them and if it isn't one of them, I'll look for the exact comment, but in the mean time here is a Youtuber talking about the same exact thing at about the 2 minute mark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiOvfLN68wM

and here is T&E talking about it as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l7sgGuMjgU

Edit: Here's the direct video of it, about 22 minutes in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCSkBsvW7l0

I don't agree. I don't think class design was the primary reasons why BFA flopped. For me, the reasons were as follows.

I didn't say it was a primary reason, but it was a contributing factor. Players just aren't happy with how their classes feel. I'd say that lackluster content, overabundant RNG, and having to repeatedly gain the unlocks on Azerite gear were a much bigger factor though.

[F Rm]

But it's not. By far the #1 complaint people in this game have is spec/talent design. I've never met a high-end raider in this game that thinks spec/class design issues have not been plaguing BFA since day 1.

This depends on what you mean by spec/talent design.

As for some specific talents, yes they are quite horrendous. At least for the Hunter class. But I'm sure we can find others who feel the same. The actual base idea that talents should provide you with a meaningful way of catering towards or even alter your core gameplay, is in my opinion a good idea.

Again, many specific talents currently in place needs some changes. Talents today should not simply provide you with X% damage to Y ability.
If you have a talent that does this, then it needs to have something more as well. Something that can make it a more interesting choice. No need for a new ability. Another passive can be enough as well. Though it depends.

I can only speak for myself ofc, but I would like for the majority of our talents to cater towards the core gameplay/abilities in various ways. While we can have a few that adds something new or goes outside of the core theme.

Especially if those few still cater towards something that has a strong connection to the class as a whole.

One way of going at it, can be found here:

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...l-Spec-Fantasy

Here you can clearly see that most talents focus on the core theme and how to build on it. But there are also a few talents that are more about the class as a whole. Talents that focus a bit more on pets. Simply because of those times where it can be very useful as a ranged spec. Open world etc...


This can ofc be applied to other specs as well. And in some cases, it might already be there.
As an example, I would prefer if BM talents focused less on stand-alone abilities that have no connection to/interaction with the core of the spec at all.

[TheRevenantHero]

I prefer the talent system now to the abombination of talent trees we used to have. Besides, there was no variety back then either. You either went with a certain build or you handicapped your character. It was the illusion of freedom of talent choices when in reality you just gimped yourself if you did whatever you wanted.

[Super Kami Dende]

What is so bad about it? Sure there have been a few times the design was better, but it is a far cry from being at it's worst.

[schwarzkopf]

Classes are where they are because Blizzard made the mistake of listening to demands for homogenisation (what players call 'balance').

[swatsonqt]

But it's not. By far the #1 complaint people in this game have is spec/talent design. I've never met a high-end raider in this game that thinks spec/class design issues have not been plaguing BFA since day 1.

and it's probably also your opinion that the spec design in general is bad. That's why you (maybe unintentionally) just look for reports of people that agree with you which leads to the conclusion that "the #1 complaint people in this game have is spec/talent design". When in fact 80% of the playerbase really doesn't care about how good a talent is because they will take what is fun to play with. Only "good" players care about this stuff and there are not so many of these. But there are enough out there to flood the forums to tell exactly what is the problem with the game while on the other hand most people simply play wow as bad as they are and have fun with it.

Conclusion: only people who care aber playing good go to the forums and complain about things like class design. That does not mean that it's the # 1 complaint by everyone. It's just the #1 complaint about the minority that qq about everything every xpac.

[Lochton]

In theory, anyways. In practice, historically, I think, balance hasn't gotten any better, and they've just balanced out all the flavor from classes, specs and talents.

Honestly, this is where the problem is. In the chase to fulfill our demands for balance, we're watching class flavor being flushed away to try and balance the game to the expectations that some feedback holds.

[Th3Scourge]

For the love of god, please remove set specs from the game. Your talent choices should determine your spec, not just arbitrarily selecting an option in a menu and *presto* now I'm a Frost DK and I have no memory or recollection of being able to cast a death coil.

I play a class, not a spec. Without doubt the worst part of modern WoW is the class design

[asil]

and it's probably also your opinion that the spec design in general is bad. That's why you (maybe unintentionally) just look for reports of people that agree with you which leads to the conclusion that "the #1 complaint people in this game have is spec/talent design". When in fact 80% of the playerbase really doesn't care about how good a talent is because they will take what is fun to play with. Only "good" players care about this stuff and there are not so many of these. But there are enough out there to flood the forums to tell exactly what is the problem with the game while on the other hand most people simply play wow as bad as they are and have fun with it.

Conclusion: only people who care aber playing good go to the forums and complain about things like class design. That does not mean that it's the # 1 complaint by everyone. It's just the #1 complaint about the minority that qq about everything every xpac.

Who gives a shit what casuals that don't do any content think. They'll still be able to do their world quests, and they can keep the same talents. The problem is number tuning, the tuning is off horribly.

You have no idea what you are talking about. Seriously, justify to me having talents in the game that are so numerically undertuned that taking no talent at all is more dps.

[HASELHOOF93]

I don't think the content in BFA is bad on a fundamental level, outside of them forgetting to add things back to the game (mat vendors, for example) the primary issue with the game is spec/talent design. Most of the specs in the game just feel bad to play, they just aren't fun. You can blame some of this on the GCD change (which to this day makes no coherent sense to me) but many specs have such little talent diversity you could remove most talents and it wouldn't matter even slightly. There are talents in the game that are so bad, they're a dps loss over taking no talent at all. People will play bad content if the specs are fun to play, but when the specs aren't fun to play then no matter how good your content is people are just going to stop.

I really just don't get the mentality blizzard had going into BFA, they were repeatedly warned by people playing the beta that many specs just felt awful and kept insisting azerite was going to fix it, and that never materialized. And because blizzard doesn't like doing large reworks mid xpac, we're now left with a bunch of specs that likely won't be fixed or fun to play until next expansion, if they're ever fixed at all.

The only solution I can see going forward is to roll back some of the massive redesigns they've done over the years and restore classes to what they used to be, and then tune the numbers. Because when we do lose azerite and essences, we're going to be left in the exact same situation we're in now, specs that feel incomplete and clunky to play.

Hey.. that's like your opinion, man.

/endthread.

[Cronovey]

Legion was power fantasy fullfilled. You can't go back from that easily.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the talent system. I think it is far better than the trees as a design, what we need is better talents and at least one more row and for every spec to support multiple play styles, not just some.

I think this is a large part of the problem; the way Legion made the classes work with the artifact weapons made almost all classes play incredibly smoothly. The artifact abilities were pretty well thought out for the most part and provided incredibly useful things to support the classes' strengths (Fury of the Illidari for Havoc which already had incredible AoE, Kingsbane amping Assassination's single target damage, etc) and really execute on what the classes already did well. On top of that progression was immediate through AP grinding and only tapered off at the end, while this expansion's artifact didn't really pick up until far later.

The Azerite traits are basically just a crappy version of the relics from our artifact weapons; they execute the same function of changing a basic ability in some way and making it stronger, except now we don't have the base versions of the traits from leveling our weapon's AP up so they feel half-assed in comparison.

Legion executed on spec's power fantasies incredibly well and then took most of it back with the 8.0 patch. Then you were left with a leveling experience devoid of any real gains; you had the standard rating scaling lowering your secondary stats, you eventually lost your legendaries, and then on top of all that you gained nothing new. I'm still a big defender of the idea (I'll call it option A) that artifact actives and legendary effects should have been added as a new row of talents at 115. Demon Hunters should have gotten options in terms of Fury of the Illidari, Anger of the Half-Giants, and Mo'arg Bionic Stabilizers for example. The row would bring back a lot of popular effects from their artifact or Legiondaries with one option for burst AoE, one for single target, and a third for consistent cleave damage. The same could be applied to most other classes in a similar fashion and I believe this should have been done to prevent the big loss in power we had from outleveling our legendaries from Legion.

The option B I thought would be interesting was instead allowing you to pick a second talent on any row at 115; for example, allowing a shadow priest to take both Legacy of the Void and Surrender to Madness on the 110 tier, or having Auspicious Spirits and Shadow Word: Death on the level 75 line. This would allow for some pretty crazy combo talents I'm sure, but would also be incredibly fun and not make leveling in BfA feel entirely pointless.

There were plenty of options available to them to make sure that the big 115 to 116 level didn't feel like such a massive drop-off, and it would also have allowed some classes to feel more complete again by regaining their artifact abilities that really made the class complete at 115 with option A. Option B would at least give incentive for leveling and allow for some pretty crazy customization options where players could swap between utility, single target builds, or AoE builds without having to sacrifice what are crucial talents for some classes.

The biggest problem with BfA is that they're honestly suffering from the success of Legion; the spec identity in Legion was strong enough to make a lot of classes feel as good, if not better, than the MoP design where most classes were in excellent shape. [For example: I still miss Rune Strike on my DK and hate what they've done to blood spec since the 6.0 changes; Legion made it feel slightly better again with the ability changes so I didn't feel like a weird caster tank using Death Coil all the time.]

Update:

Who gives a shit what casuals that don't do any content think. They'll still be able to do their world quests, and they can keep the same talents. The problem is number tuning, the tuning is off horribly.

You have no idea what you are talking about. Seriously, justify to me having talents in the game that are so numerically undertuned that taking no talent at all is more dps.

Can you show any actual examples of talents that actually decrease your output, or is this just pointless hyperbole? Legitimately asking here, because I can't think of any that would result in an actual loss of damage just by taking them.

[TwoMana]

While the OP is mostly talking about their subjective opinion, the problems with class design have been mounting since MoP but really blossomed in Legion, where the Legendaries and Artifacts took the role of "talent trees". This has continued to BFA. Whilte Azerite traits don't change the way you play your class, essences do.
Essences are not lottery items like Legendaries, but they are locked behind fairly tall gates.

This feels bad - deciding between "AoE build" or "Strong ST build" shouldn't depend on grinding 50k honor, leveling you 3 Nazjatar followers to lvl 30 or collecting gazillion Mechagon Oscilators.

They should be customization options in the talent tree OR baseline class abilities. This is result of their furious baseline pruning and lack of attention to the talent system - we didn't even get a lvl120 talent row

I'm OK with barebones base classes - BUT ONLY - if the customization is available in the talent tree - not gated behind huge item/rep grinds.

[Paula Deen]

I gotta say. Peeps in here saying its subjective.

I quit because of two things. Class Design and Lack of Catch Up.

Everyone of my dozens of friends say the same thing. While yeah. Its 'subjective' what you do and do not like. Liking to eat actual human shit/feces is a subjective stance too. Doesn't mean its not one of the dumbest hills you could die on.

Shaman as a whole has not been fun since MoP. Legion kinda made Enhance fun and outsiders loved Ele, but BFA just gutted it. And every single person I know says the same about there classes and specs.

[Otimus]

Honestly, this is where the problem is. In the chase to fulfill our demands for balance, we're watching class flavor being flushed away to try and balance the game to the expectations that some feedback holds.

It's not even isolated to WoW. They do the same sort of thing in Overwatch, too. Sort of in Hearthstone, as well. (Probably in other stuff, but WoW and those are the only Blizzard games I play/played). Blizzard has a weird sense of balance. They do things in giant pendulum swings coupled with putting way too much weight on, in my opinion anyways, the "wrong" feedback (and often just flat out ignoring feedback when they think they know better). (Usually, just top end players looking to optimize the fun out of everything, and or making reactions based on something being too popular)

- - - Updated - - -

For the love of god, please remove set specs from the game. Your talent choices should determine your spec, not just arbitrarily selecting an option in a menu and *presto* now I'm a Frost DK and I have no memory or recollection of being able to cast a death coil.

I play a class, not a spec. Without doubt the worst part of modern WoW is the class design

That'd be nice. But that might be fun and give people actual freedom and RPG elements in this RPG game and someone might complain about it! Can't have that!

[Accendor]

most dps specs feel good to me except for a few obvious ones like feral, enhancement, arms, arcane, etc.

Yeah, you are right. DPS speccs are fine except feral, enhancement, Arms, arcane, elemental, havoc, fire (compared to legion), shadow, destruction, demonology, beast master, frost, unholy, subtlety, assasination and retribution. But yeah, the rest is fine! I guess.

[nRes]

I mean, it should be obvious that class design was guttered and pruned transitioning from legion to BFA.

You lose 5 things and gain 1 thing, that's not fun.

Also, a lot of people are saying class design is purely a subjective opinionated topic. It's actually both objective and subjective.

GCD change is bad design or backwards, fact.

Classes were pruned from legion to BFA, fact.

Class design is nonfunctional in BFA, fact.

Let me correct you there. Class design was gutted in Legion, BFA just finished the job.

As a hunter main I shudder thinking about my class. They dumpstered it, turned it into a complete joke.

[schwarzkopf]

Blizzard "listening" to players.

Exactly the problem - the sooner they stop, the better.

[Fartoo]

But it's not. By far the #1 complaint people in this game have is spec/talent design. I've never met a high-end raider in this game that thinks spec/class design issues have not been plaguing BFA since day 1.

Greetings, my name is Fartoo, I raid mythic as balance and I don't think that issues have been plaguing my spec since day one.

There, now you've met one.

Only thing I'd change about the spec is give it New Moon to be baseline, dropping a big ass moon on top of the heads of your enemies has a pretty good feeling to it.

[Palapop]

shadowpriest is somewhat okay aside from some clunkiness but ya there's a good handful of specs that aren't great rn but there's plenty of good ones to choose from too and that goes with basically any expansion/patch. you could always go play classic where there's only like 3 dps specs that are even viable at all and aren't even fun to play

"somewhat okay aside from some clunkiness".... are you kidding me?
compare that what you said to cata sp or mop sp. 2 COMPLETELY different play-styles, yet, both were epic!

I'm curious to know what are these "plenty of good ones to choose from". All specs together got disenchanted and now, they are dust of what they used to be.